Before talking about nutrition itself let me give you an opinion:
I think you should learn better and more efficient ways to activities that you do everyday.
If you you commute everyday by car to a particular place, isn’t it worth to take the time and maybe plan a faster route?
If you work on the computer everyday isn’t it worth to try out different productivity strategies?
Because you do those things everyday day, even a small increase in efficiency results in a significant improvement in your overall life.
That’s nutrition also.
Without understanding nutrition the gym may not work
2 different examples:
Example 1– Let’s say a guy who is overweight, maybe 30% body fat, goes to the gym and wants to loose weight, because he wants to improve his appearance. Awesome!
Now let’s assume that his training plan is great and he his consistent with it and does everything right, even when it comes to his recovery outside of the gym.
If that guy does not understand nutrition and just eats more or less what he was eating before, that led him to being overweight, with maybe just a few tweaks switching “bad” foods for “healthier” foods he might still not see the results he wants. Why?
Because his hunger levels may lead him to be in more or less a caloric maintenance state or isocaloric state, therefore maintaining the same bodyweight as before.
Now with the same bodyweight if he is indeed training hard and consistently he will gain muscle and loose a bit of fat in the process.
However significant results that can be seen in the mirror will take a long time. In practice this can lead to lack of motivation to stick to the gym and overall little to no progress was made. Not good.
Example 2– Let’s say another guy is very skinny, barely has any muscle and also maybe at 10% body fat, and he wants to gain muscle. He wants to get “jacked”. That’s great!
Again the same conditions as before: he as a great training plan, he is consistent and he is recovering well.
Now if he again doesn’t understand nutrition, and just eats more or less what he was eating before (and probably we are talking about a guy with low appetite as I found out talking with guys in that situation) then he won’t gain weight.
Muscle mass can’t just appear on his body. Think about it. If a guy continues to weigh the same and wants to gain muscle, where are the “ingredients” for the muscle coming from? From his fat? The guy is skinny! From where then? Your body isn’t’ going to say “oh I want go gain muscle but I’m maintaining the same weight, I think I’m going to go with some bone mass and take as fuel to use to build muscle” Of course not.
So in situation like that, the skinny guy needs to be eating more food, or more energy, that the food/energy he needs to just maintaining his body, or survive. He needs to be in a caloric surplus or hyper caloric diet.
Even pre packaged nutrition plans may not work
Let’s take those same to guys I talked before and give them a pre-packaged nutrition plan. Everything they need to eat: all the meals, the amount of ingredients, everything layed out.
Realistically speaking, are those guys 100% of the time, going to stick with that? No, not realistically speaking and statistically across a large number of guys it’s just not going to happen in the long term.
Why? Maybe the guy that was trying to loose weight really followed the meals every day of the week but put too much olive oil or fat oils in his meals, resulting in consuming a lot more calories than planned. Or the guy trying to gain weight followed mostly the meals he had planned but skipped sometimes the meal that had the most amount of calories, without him realised that indeed it was the case.
So in both of those cases, if the guys understood that the olive oil had a lot of calories and that one of the meals of the plan had also the most calories maybe it would be easier for them to identify the problem and fix the issue.
Understanding nutrition allows you flexibility
Let’s say the guy who was trying to loose weight is planning to go dine out. That’s perfectly fine. Not because he doesn’t understand nutrition he might think “oh it’s just one meal outside of the plan”. Well, it might be just one meal however it can be a meal with a gigantic amount of calories, especially considering he is not in control of the food, the restaurant is.
If he understood nutrition he could plan in advance and in that day he could reduce the calorie intake leading up the the dinner (without reducing the amount of food) and in that dinner he could opt for lower calorie options. He can still go out do dinner and more or less stay on track, if he knows what he is doing.
How do you start to understand nutrition
Read labels. Not the marketing stuff saying “ high protein cheese” or “ potato chips with 30% less fat”.
The actual official nutrition information labels, and there are 4 numbers you need to check.
1- The amount of energy per mass of food. This can be Kcal/100g .
And then the macronutrients:
2- how much protein per 100g.
3- how much fat per 100g.
4- how much carbs per 100g.
That’s it. Forget everything else, at least for now.
If you focus on those and start to know what those numbers are for the foods you eat you are well on your way to understand the basics of nutrition.
And then well on your way to achieve your physique goals.
Conclusion
If you want to transform your body you need to understand nutrition. It is not enough to just go to the gym.
Even if you have a planed diet someone else made you it is still better for long term results if you know exactly what you are doing.
Start by reading the nutrition labels of the foods you usually eat. Take notes and remember the 4 numbers listed previously. Over time you will find patterns and have a pretty good estimate of what foods have more or less calories or more or less protein and so on.
Then you can make the nutrition decisions for yourself and eat in a manner to achieve your goals.